Now, on to the dirty stuff…

@chpwn has explained that @comex uses the CFF font stack overflow to jailbreak, which is essentially a font file placed in a FlateDecode stream.

If you copy jailbreakme.com to a local server, you can dissect the small web-app and see how it works.  Essentially, the site checks for your device’s user-agent, and loads the correct PDF file for the exploit from http://www.jailbreakme.com/_/ through the Javascript function new Image()

One can then open the PDF files with a hex editor, and examine them more closely.  The jailbreak uses a FlateDecode stream (which allows any data, including plain-text, to be compressed with zlib and inserted into a PDF) to load a font file which in turn causes a stack overflow:

If you decode the FlateDecode stream with GhostView, you can see the actual code used to perform the jailbreak.  I’ve highlighted a line that should be familiar if you’ve visited jailbreakme.com on your iOS device recently.

First, I’ll cover some of Apple’s touted features added to this new product, since Jobs himself claims, “iPhone 4 is the biggest leap since the original iPhone”.

• FaceTime: A much-desired feature, finally added!  Video chats…yes, they work.  Though not up to par with Skype, or even an AIM-based video chat, the quality and clarity of picture and sound is pretty darn good.  Unfortunately, the biggest downfall to this feature is currently the iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 only limitation.  Furthermore, Apple hasn’t allowed any App Store apps to take advantage of the feature, save for Fring.  To make matters even worse, you also have to be on a Wifi network to use FaceTime, so this begs the question: if you already have a video-chat enabled laptop or desktop in the home, what’s the sense in using the iPhone?  Of course, if and when AT&T allows FaceTime over their 3G network, these issues will get put to rest.
• Retina Display: This is perhaps the single best new feature on the iPhone 4.  This display is so sharp that it’s honestly difficult to describe without actually seeing it in person.  Holding it next to the 3GS iPhone makes the 3GS (excellent) screen look just abysmal.  With four times the pixel density of the previous iPhones, text and images are now infinitely easier on the eyes, and there is a whole new level of sharpness and brilliance to the display.  Please, if you haven’t seen this, check it out in person…
• Camera & Flash: Sporting a new, 5-megapixel camera that can record 720p HD video, the iPhone aims to consolidate more of your devices into one — this time the aim is your point-and-shoot camera.  For me, this new camera with LED flash is a much appreciated upgrade.  Photograph clarity is increased significantly — if you don’t believe me, just check out this thread.  The night-time quality isn’t great, but is definitely improved over the nonexistent flash of the past.  Also, the flash is EXTREMELY bright, and makes an excellent flashlight.

My personal experience with the phone has been good overall, but has been severely swayed by the obtrusive problem with the antenna design.  As you may know, the entire metal band around the outside of the phone is actually the antenna.  As reported by many others, the phone does indeed lose reception dramatically if gripped firmly with a hand around the lower section.  This is much more noticeable in low-signal areas, but I have seen it happen when the phone was reporting 5/5 bar signal strength.  Since Apple has offered free cases I plan to update my review when it arrives.  For now, I would recommend it based on the features, but be warned if you live in a low-signal area like me!

While the build quality of this device is unsurpassed, this may be a case where functionality was sacrificed for design.  I can’t rave enough about the slick UI, fast responsiveness to touch inputs, extremely fast browsing speeds, quick app-to-app switching, but simply not being able to place a call in my own office is very frustrating.  One other small note — this phone doesn’t feel as solid in the hand as the 2G and 3G/S models did…in fact, the glass is extremely slippery — if you set it on a curved surface it will slowly slide down it and crash to the floor.

I rate it a 3.5/5, until my bumper case arrives.

UPDATE: My bumper case arrived a few days after posting this article, and my review rating has to stay the same. Unfortunately, the bumper doesn’t seem to help my reception issues — the deathgrip still results in signal attenuation just as without the case. It seems the iPhone 4 is just doomed to have bad reception wherever signal strength is generally weak. Also, the bumper case caused me other problems: in my car, I can’t plug in my aux 1/8″ jack into the headphone port (the bumper restricts the size of cables that can plug in), nor can I plug in my Belkin car charger. BOO!

This guide will cover all of the basics you need to set up a WordPress Blog on your website. You can actually set up a WordPress account for free at the official WordPress Website, or, for more control, you can download XAMPP for Windows or MAMP for Mac OS X and perform all of these same steps locally. This is especially useful for creating sandbox environments when developing new sites and applications. For the purposes of this tutorial, I’ll be using screenshots of Mac OS X 10.6 and MAMP 1.8.3.

1. Download the newest version of WordPress, and unzip the contents. At the time of this posting, version 2.9.1 is the latest incarnation.
2. Copy the entire WordPress directory to your MAMP/XAMPP installation (the “htdocs” directory inside the MAMP folder on OS X), or to your web server. For SEO purposes, you should place the WordPress directory inside a folder titled “Blog” — this is only necessary if you’re actually planning to use WordPress, and you’re not just testing it locally.
   




3. Launch MAMP/XAMPP, and click “Start Servers” to activate the Apache and MYSQL servers. If you are using your own web server, you can skip this step.
   




4. Browse to the MAMP/XAMPP start page at http://localhost:8888/MAMP/ and access PHPMyAdmin from the top menu. Once in PHPMyAdmin, create a new database. I’ll call mine “wordpress” for simplicity’s sake. If you’re using MAMP like I am, a user “root” has already been established (with password “root” as well, no quotes of course). Root will be able to access all databases, but if you want to be safe you should add a new user instead.
   




5. Now it’s time to actually install WordPress. You can either edit the config.php file yourself, or use the WordPress installation wizard (recommended). Browse to http://localhost:8888/wordpress (assuming you kept the wordpress folder’s original name — change this in your URL if necessary). You’ll need to enter the name of the database (“wordpress”), the username (“root”), and the password (“root”). Your server is localhost if you’re using MAMP. If you’re using your own web server, the hostname will generally be either localhost or your domain name, but you should check with your hosting provider to be certain.
   




6. If all has gone well, you should now have a working WordPress blog! Congratulations! Feel free to email me or post comments if you have any questions or concerns. Thanks.
   
   

   Congratulations, your WordPress installation should now be up and running.

Click here to see my implementation of SnowStack. I’ve modified his source code and used it to pull from our Flickr photostream. Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6 and Safari 4 are required for the effects to work properly — iPhones and iPod Touches with OS 3.0 and newer also work!. Sorry Windows users and late OS X adopters!

Check out Charles’ blog post for more info!

Click here to read the article…

I’m beginning a new website for Bogies Bar (map). The client desired a simple and effective way to manage and update content on their site without having to pay an IT support person each time. As a result, I’ve opted to use a wonderful new, open-source content management system, called Concrete5. The Concrete team’s tagline for the product is “A CMS made for Marketing, but strong enough for Geeks!” Essentially this means a marketing team that has minimal experience with web design and scripting languages can still easily and effectively manage a C5 website. At the same time, C5 is extremely extensible, and web-designer geeks like us can write add-ons and themes, and even sell them in the C5 Marketplace!

I’ll provide some more detailed how-to’s after the first of the year, but this CMS is shaping up to be extremely helpful to many businesses looking to make more extensive use of their internet presence. I’ve implemented websites in many similar softwares, such as Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, and ExpressionEngine. I can confidently say that C5 is by far the most client-friendly, elegant solution I have seen to date.

In order to get a Concrete5 based site up and running, you will need a web-server with PHP5 support. The following is a brief explanation of how to get a C5 site running, and how to implement your own theme.

1. First, grab a copy of C5 and copy it to your web-server. Then, navigate there in your favorite web browser, and proceed with the installation. You will likely need to create a new MYSQL database on your server to link the installation to.
2. Create a new directory in /Concrete5/themes/ (for the sake of this tutorial, we will name the theme’s directory “b_rad”)
3. Create a text file, named “description.txt”, and save it under /Concrete5/themes/b_rad/. The first line of text in this document should be the theme’s name, and the second line should contain a brief description of the theme.
4. Create a 120px by 90px screenshot of the theme, and save it as thumbnail.png in /Concrete5/themes/b_rad/.
5. Copy in an existing static HTML/CSS theme, complete with any CSS and Javascript directories if they exist. If you don’t have a theme designed yet, you can design it yourself, or download a free theme for testing purposes.
6. Rename index.html (or any HTML page you want to create a Concrete5 page type for) to default.php, and open it with your favorite text editor.  Keep in mind that default themes require you to have at least a default.php, but many other addons require view.php, left_sidebar.php, and right_sidebar.php.
7. Modify any relative links for CSS and images — they will look like this:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/style.css" />

<img src="images/logo.png" />

So change them to this:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="<?php= $this->getStylesheet('css/style.css'); ?>" />

<img src="<?php=$this->getThemePath(); ?>/images/logo.png" />

8. Completely replace the title element in the header like so:

<?php Loader::element('header_required'); ?>

9. Add this line to the footer (before the body is closed)
10. To create editable regions such as navigation, divs, and ad space, implement the following code:

<?php $left_nav = new Area('Left Nav'); $left_nav->display($c); ?>

This creates a new editable region, referred to as $left_nav, that is recognized by Concrete5.

11. After this, you can continue creating more editable regions. When you’re ready to test the implementation of the theme, browse to the Concrete5 administrator dashboard, and activate the theme! Enjoy.

concrete5 – incontext editing makes running a website simple on Vimeo.